Evans cleans up with Broadreach sale

FORMER Conservative MP and chairman of Luton Town football club David Evans has made another fortune after selling his shop-cleaning business to AIM-listed MacLellan for up to £19.4m. Evans cleaned up 16 years ago when he sold Brengreen, one of the front-runners in Lady Thatcher's drive to privatise council services, in a £32m deal to BET, which subsequently went into Rentokil Initial.

Evans, who played for Aston Villa and cricket for Gloucestershire and Warwickshire, set up Broadreach, based in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, in 1990 along with another former Brengreen executive Jack Broadley. It has built up a massive business with more than 5,000 employees turning over more than £40m a year providing cleaning and other support services largely to retailers including Sainsbury's, Tesco and B&Q.

MacLellan is in a very similar business with cleaning contracts for some of the largest shopping centres in the country including Bluewater, Whiteleys and Cribbs Causeway near Bristol. It also specialises in cleaning car factories with Aston Martin, Lotus and Toyota among its clients.

Evans and Broadley own most of the shares in Broadreach. They will receive £10m in cash and the rest in MacLellan shares, which they have undertaken not to sell for the next 12 months.

Evans, 67, was Tory MP for Welwyn and Hatfield from 1987 to 1997 and was renowned for his outspoken views on a wide variety of subjects, frequently citing the views of 'my wife Janice'.